Peter Rabbit's Arc

Chapter 2 of 13

The seeds sprouted, but the sprouts came up thin. Peter knelt in his rows each morning and counted them. The green tops were pale. He dug one carrot to check. It slid out short and skinny, no thicker than his finger. He tasted the soil and found it dry and grainy, a bare skin over old stone. This dirt could not feed a full basket. His crop would come up too small to repay the shop, and he had already promised the first basket by winter's end. He carried the skinny carrot to the shop and set it on the counter. Ginger picked it up and turned it in his paw. "Well," he said, "it's honest. It's just very, very shy." He set it down gently, as if it might break. His green coat hung looser than Peter remembered. Pickles came from the back with his ledger. He looked at the carrot, then at the two coin piles by the till. Both were smaller than last time. "We spent our last seed on that," he said. His voice stayed even, but his paw pressed flat on the counter. "If the basket comes up like this, we close." "My soil's too thin," Peter said. "There's stone under it. Nothing grows fat in it." He looked at the empty jars on the shelves. He had made a promise, and the ground would not keep it for him. Ginger was quiet a moment. Then he scratched behind one ear. "When I was small, my mother grew leeks over a fish head. Buried it deep. She swore the leeks grew twice as tall." He shrugged. "Cats remember fish. Maybe your dirt is only hungry." Peter thought of the great tree near his warren, the one with roots like the backs of animals. Under its broad leaves the ground was black and soft, thick with fallen blossom and rotted leaf, year on year. He had napped there a hundred times and never once thought to dig it. He ran home before dark. He filled his basket again and again with the rich black soil from under the tree's roots. He carried load after load to his patch. He spread the dark dirt over his thin rows and worked it in with his paws until the ground turned soft and deep. His arms ached. His fur was black to the elbow. By the last light he stood and looked at his patch. The rows were fed now. The soil could hold a full-grown crop. He had solved the thin ground. But kneeling there, he saw the paw prints again. Fresh ones, pressed deep in his new dark soil. The neighbors had smelled the rich dirt too. And richer soil meant fatter carrots, the kind hungry rabbits could not walk past. He had made his crop worth stealing.